Here is another chapter. Enjoy. (Man, I am really repeating myself here)

The Preceding Hero's Equation
After the matter with Zappa of the Asura Tribe, I washed my head and body and then, from among the many public baths, I chose a comparatively small public bath and submerged myself in it.
A huge bath would have been fine as well, but you could say that I personally feel that a small bath suits my nature better.
I said that it was small, but even then, it was vast enough that I wouldn't feel constrained if I were to stretch my body out.
「Fuu……」
Submerging myself in the bath, I slovenly relaxed my limbs.
The heat of the hot water spread throughout my body, and felt pleasant.
I haven't felt this relaxed ever since I came to this world, so a breath spontaneously escaped my mouth.

「Once the tournament is over……Where should I go?」
With leeway that I haven't had in a while being born, what I suddenly thought of was about what would happen from here on out.
I traveled from Luxeria with my sight on this town of Galarie.
It took me more time than I expected at the beginning, but I was somehow able to reach this town.
As for how it turned from my objective of being a spectator to actually being a partic.i.p.ant in the matches is, how should I put it, the badness in my relations.h.i.+ps is probably the cause of it.
「Places I have not yet gone to……Even if I say that, I've already conquered more than half of the world.」
Of course, that was in my travels three years ago.
I wandered from place to place all around the world. I haven't felt how vast the world was as much as I did at that time.
Sylvia, Leo and the others were also there, and it was a time where we could go to Leezelion.
It want to go to as many places that I haven't gone to as possible, but to begin with, I don't even know what is in those places. Maybe I can request for some shelter under Sylvia and search for a place to go to while living a freeloading lifestyle of laziness and freedom.
No, I'm easily able to imagine a Sylvia that would snap from me having a lifestyle of no productivity and start chasing me while swinging her sword about.

I wonder if me embracing a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic-like thought of "That also sounds pretty pleasant" is due to the comfortability of the bath. Or could it be because I really am a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t?

「It's probably the latter.」
Rather than attacking girls, I get aroused from being criticized by girls.
No, still, if I were asked to do it, I'd be willing to go around to the attacking side……In other words, I'm a pervert that has no choice but to recognize that he's on both sides.

……Since it seems like I'm about to unintentionally confess my own inclinations at this rate, and since that would be scary, let's put an end to this topic.

Still, this place is quiet. Even though there are scores of customers, the audible hustle and bustle is far away. I wonder if it's because I'm on the edge of the bathing area. Man, this is truly pleasant.
As I thought, time to enter a bath, being free without being bothered by anyone, needs to be saved. It being peaceful all alone…….

My thoughts were thinking such things, but due to the words that I heard from the other side of the wall, I was pulled out from my sea of thoughts.
「Hey, hey, this hot water, do you think it connects to the other side?」
I think that those words needlessly dared to cast a hook and raised it up.
However, I felt a large impact similar to that time I got hit on the head with a hammer from those words.
「Ehh～, I wonder, who knows.」
That was probably a friend, or maybe an acquaintance that reflexively answered without much thought after being asked. It could be said that while it was a halfhearted response, it was also a suitable reply.
But the girl that answered ended there. While it was an appropriate reply, it was nothing but a reply. After all, it's not like she wanted to know.
But I was different. From the words of the woman that entertained that question, I also entertained the question.
And then I realized it. This hot water that I was currently submerged in, it pa.s.sed through to the other side by a pipe or something. In other words, the possibility that I was connected to the women's bath existed on the corpuscle level.
Now that I knew that, I could no longer relax in this public bath. My thoughts would once again fall to vulgar and perverted ideas.
You might be disgusted by a male middle school student that thinks of nothing but perverted things, but men are pretty much like that for their entire lives. Having a keen interest in perverted things, he will never forget the first p.o.r.no that he picked up until the day he dies. That idiocy is the true state of men.
Now then, for gentlemen living in the world for self-protection, speaking of what those that fell to the same level as me would do,
「The drainage, where is the drainage.」
I searched for the gate to the country of dreams that connects to the women's bath.
If I'm correct in guessing the process of how the hot water of this bath is connected to the women's bath, the place that it reaches after the drainage is most likely the same.
Reaching that place and running up the drainage that connects to the women's bath is equation to victory that I derived.
However, right when I hit the stage of finding the drainage, I finally realized that I had a technical barrier.
Actually, instead of being technical, it was more of a physical barrier.
Now then, I'm sure that there are some that have noticed already. Naturally, it was "how would I slip into the drainage".
The drainage was originally designed so that it wouldn't suck up a person, and yet be able to suck up large quant.i.ties of water.
Whether it be modern j.a.pan, or the public baths of the Free City of Galarie in this other world of Reynbrook, that design of the drainage hasn't changed.
That's right, in the plans that humans designed, the drainage mouth wasn't wide enough for a person to fit in.
For there to be people that read this far ahead and know that I don't have the const.i.tution to alter my body at will like a slime, this couldn't have been made by ordinary people.
The equation of victory was brittle and crumbled away.

Having been battered by the cruel and dream-less reality, with the mood of wanting to throw anything and everything away, I stretched out my body and floated face up in this public bath that seemed like no one would come to.
The saying 「Reality and coffee aren't sweet」 is quite true. Incidentally, that was a wise saying that I thought up just now and how it has no substance is its charm.
I had fallen into an incomprehensible mental state of thinking "if only I could flow down into the drainage together with the hot water just like this and have a watery grave", but noticing a certain something, I stood up with a splash.
Hot water entering my ears felt disgusting. However, I was ecstatic to the point of not caring about that.
That's right, there wasn't only one equation.
The answer was the same, but the path to it, there was a countless number of them.
I realized there was gap between me and the women's bath and the gap between the interrupting wall and the ceiling had a large threshold.
It didn't matter for what sake or for what reason that gap was there for.
Because right now, a threshold that connected to the women's definitely existed.

The new equation to victory that I had just now re-derived was, yes, to peep.